Freedom At Afrikaburn

This Last Afrikaburn being my fourth was definitely my best yet. Having organised theme camps for the past two years, getting a chance to only worry about myself and Coral made the whole experience a lot easier.

Coral and I headed into the Karoo around 4am on a Monday morning hoping to arrive before the hoards. Alas there were burners a lot keener on the event than us, having come the night prior and camped out by the gate. Not phased we checked in and did the ceremonial devirgination of Coral, whos first burn this was. After she rolled around in the dust for a bit and hit the gong we were off to find ourselves a camping spot.

We pitched our tents, slapped on some fancy dress and went on a mission. There were a lot of large art works this year, nothing as large as Subterrafuge from the year before but the average size and number of larger structures was quite a lot greater. A lot to take in and explore.

The rest of my family were arriving on Wednesday so our job was to find a good spot and pitch the camping area. After having a bit of a party on our first night, our intoxication barely managed to stifle the baseline echoing from a near by theme camp rocking a function one sound system. We woke in the morning to find we had accidentally camped in a loud zone, obviously. So we gingerly gathered everything up and moved quite a way away into the new area. Which certain areas of happened to be a flood zone. With rain expected Friday we ended up packing our things again and moving to a designated safe area.

At previous burns I always felt I never really contributed to the gifting concept of Burn. So this year Coral and I really went all out. We handed out hundreds of laser lights, bracelets, necklaces, magic wands, Rizzla and boxes of brownies (the normal kind). Every person we met who we felt we had a connection with received something.

Everything was bigger this year; bigger structures, bigger vehicles, bigger camps, but not just the size the number of each had grown too. There seemed to be a lot more places to chill, hang out, party or do other Burn related things. Obviously Afrikaburn grows every year but considering the population of Tankwa Town had only increased by 1000 Burners what I expected this year compared to what I saw in desert were two very different things.

One of the places we spent a lot of time was The Cave or Bas’s Bar. A little nook under one of the Platforms on the Lighthouse dance floor. It was a good meeting spot and a really good place to just chill. Not many people knew about it but those who spotted our blue lights shining out from underneath would sometimes stick their heads through the gaps and we’d invite them in for a beer and some banter.

This will probably be my last burn for a while now that I’ve flown the coup. Maybe I’ll hit up Burning Man later this year.